Toni Harp winner in New Haven mayoral race

(Mara Lavitt — New Haven Register) November 5, 2013 New HavenKelly's Pub: Toni Harp addresses supporters after her election as mayor of New Haven. At left is her daughter Djana, at right is her son Matthew. Governor Dannel Malloy is second from left.

NEW HAVEN >> Toni Nathaniel Harp will be New Haven’s first female mayor having beat Justin Elicker in a tough race that pitted the Democratic leadership against new voices looking to influence the direction of the city after 20 years under John DeStefano Jr.

Harp, a state senator for more than two decades, won Tuesday by a margin of less than 6 percent after labor, her longtime constituents in the 10th senatorial district and the Democratic machine coalesced to get voters to the polls across the city.

Elicker, 38, a relative newbie in New Haven, got 46.9 percent of the machine vote to Harp’s 52.5 percent, in an early tally.

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This was extremely high for someone who was running against the entire New Haven Democratic Party hierarchy from the local level to state Senate Majority Leader Martin Looney, Gov. Dannel P, Malloy, Connecticut U.S. Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy and U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3.

An upset by Elicker would have been the first since Frank Logue defeated incumbent Mayor Bart Guida in 1975 in a liberal reform movement within the party that lasted for two terms.

Harp, 66, will be the second black leader and the second state senator to trade policy making at the Capitol in Hartford for a shorter ride to City Hall on Church Street, where demands will be more immediate - ranging from the mundane to serious fiscal decisions - and where the tenor will be harsher than the collegial deference in the state legislature.

The jubilant winner hit the crescendo note of her “Girl On Fire” campaign for mayor with a rally at Kelly’s Restaurant & Bar downtown.

Keeping a theme she had adopted in recent weeks, Harp told supporters the sound they heard Tuesday was “glass ceiling” shattering.

“This is a starting point. A beginning. A chance to arise anew,” she said.

Harp said Elicker had called to congratulate her on her victory. “He is a young man of ideas and substance and he has a great future ahead of him,” she said.

Elicker told his supporters that he would continue to work for a better city.

“This campaign is about what’s best for New Haven and I will be reaching out to people involved in the Harp campaign to see how we can move this city forward and I expect everyone in this room to do the same thing,” Elicker said.

He told his supporters that he didn’t regret continuing the race after coming in second in the September Democratic primary. He said he knew he faced an “uphill battle” from the beginning.

“I’m so proud to be a part of this campaign because I’m proud to be standing side by side with so many people that believed in the ideas that we were talking about that believed in a government that was based on actual policy,” Elicker said.

Elicker said it is “premature” for him to discuss future political aspirations but he could see himself collaborating with Harp to move the city forward.

Harp gave a shout-out to DeStefano. “He did the best that he knew how to do on behalf of the city of New Haven and we should all be grateful for that,” Harp said.

Destefano said in a statement he was “excited by the promise of new leadership that Toni Harp will bring to the City of New Haven. As the current Mayor of New Haven, and as a lifelong New Haven resident, I look forward to the new administration’s commitment to serve the hopes and dreams of the people of our wonderful city. I will be glad to assist in any way I can.”

Turnout in the September Democratic primary was only 29 percent with 14,807 votes cast as compared to the 1989 primary where former state Sen. John Daniels beat DeStefano and then became the first black mayor in the city with almost 17,000 votes out of 24,767 to win in the general election that year.

“It was a different era,” said former state Rep. William Dyson, who backed Harp in this race and chaired the state Appropriations Committee before Harp.

New Haven now has a bigger population of black and Hispanic residents than in 1989 and essentially is a city with a majority of minority households.

The turnout Tuesday was an estimated 29 percent with Harp getting 10,346 machine votes in an early count to 9,234 for Elicker.There was only a 25 percent turnout when Jeffrey Kerekes, with little money got 45 percent to 55 percent of the vote DeStefano two years ago, a total that likely influenced the mayor’s decision to retire after 10 terms, the most ever for a New Haven mayor.

The idea in this seminal election was to bring the majority Democrats, 50,329 strong here, together after pockets of the party felt alienated from DeStefano for years, but they are still split.

It remains to be seen if the multiple factions apparent during the primary come together or start looking to challenge Harp in two years.

Harp Tuesday night talked about inclusion. “I want to send out the word tonight ... You will be included. You will have a place at the table. You will be heard,” she said.

“We need to give voice to the voiceless,” she said of the people she met campaigning who felt disconnected from their government.

The win was also a big one for Harp’s campaign manager, Jason Bartlett, a former state representative, who has run multiple campaigns in the last few decades. Up to now he had four in the win column and 11 loses, but number five - the Harp campaign - was his biggest victory.

Elicker’s campaign was run by Kyle Buda, 25, who brought Elicker close to a victory that most people did not think was possible. He praised his boss after the votes were in.

“I think he’s got a really bright future ahead of him and I think the remnants of this campaign are going to be long lasting,” Buda said.

Harp, who was raised in Salt Lake City after she was adopted by her grandparents, was a private person who had to open up and share her story as she got into the free-for-all that is mayoral politics.

By the end, her campaign framed Harp as someone who grew up in a segregated community and was now breaking the barrier in local electoral politics where she become the 50th mayor, succeeding 49 men in the job of running New Haven. The new mayor also told the dramatic story of overcoming polio as a 4-year old, where she spent a year in an iron lung and it was not certain if she would ever walk again.

With 20 wards reporting, Elicker was ahead 6,367 to 6,141 on the machines, but that changed when the rest of the black wards were tallied.

Voting went smoothly throughout the day, according to the registrar of voters office, and 160 residents had registered to vote by 6 p.m.. This is the first year same-day registration was allowed outside of presidential elections.

Harp, a top vote-getter in the senatorial elections for decades and co-chairwoman of the powerful Appropriations Committee in Hartford, had to fight in this election, where not all the city’s large minority community backed her and voters in parts of Westville, East Rock and the East Shore found Elicker’s fiscal message more compelling.

The troubled finances of Harp’s late husband, Wendell Harp, played a role in the campaign, with her primary opponents making sure it stayed in the discussion, as well as Toni Harp’s own tax troubles when she failed to pay federal income taxes from 1996 through 2000. She cleared that $12,111 IRS debt by 2001 after liens were placed on her home.

Wendell Harp’s company, Renaissance Management, is the top state tax scofflaw, owing $1.1 million for a number of years after losing a battle that went to the state Supreme Court. His affordable housing properties were in the news when an apartment was found to have feces in the hallways and was open to prostitutes and drug dealers.

There were more than 15 mayoral debates since the spring, when the pent-up ambitions of Democrats who always wanted to be mayor, but would not challenge DeStefano, jumped in with seven candidates at one point looking for the job.

That number dropped to four for the September primary where Harp took 49 percent of the tally with 7,327 votes, to Elicker’s 3,417, former Economic Development Administrator Henry Fernandez’s 2,782 votes and 1,143 for Hillhouse Principal Kermit Carolina.

The other three - Matthew Nemerson, state Rep. Gary Holder-Winfield and Sundiata Keitazulu - gave up their own campaigns early on to back Harp, with Carolina backing Elicker after the primary.

There were multiple missteps throughout, the biggest one being the failure of the Democratic Town Committee to file its endorsed slate in time, which forced the mayoral contenders, as well as the aldermanic and city-town clerk candidates to petition to get on the September ballot.

The latest problem are voters in Ward 8 who have filed complaints with the State Election Enforcement Commission that their absentee ballots were illegally picked up by unauthorized people.

Alderman Michael Smart, who won the city-town clerk contest, had taken out more than 200 absentee ballot applications and workers associated with his campaign have been identified by some voters as allegedly mishandling the ballots.

After thanking a host of people, from campaign staff to Carolina, Elicker turned to his wife. Elicker said Natalie got on board when he first mentioned running for mayor during his wedding proposal, and he hoped she didn’t regret that decision.

The attention in the room quickly turned to Natalie, who stood in the crowd shaking her head “no.” Elicker choked up after the two embraced.

He said he plans to take a vacation “to an undisclosed location,” he said, laughing, after having spent the last year running for mayor.

Elicker, who has been in New Haven for six years and on the Board of Aldermen for four, was in the race the longest and ran a campaign full of policy proposals and ways to immediately begin addressing the city’s fiscal problems and long term pension issues.

Harp countered she was the one with the experience and connections in Hartford to get what the city needed, but Elicker said during Harp’s two- decade tenure the state’s budget became more precarious and its debt increased from $20 billion to $30 billion while she was never able to improve the payments in lieu of taxes that could have stabilized New Haven’s finances.

He was critical of Harp’s dependence on a large funding raising effort that brought in donations from businesses with a stake in the city and labor that already controls the Board of Aldermen and the town committee.

Harp raised some $500,000 with labor contributing $100,000 of that total to her and her supporters on the Board of Aldermen.

She also engaged in old-fashioned retail politics where the campaign paid a large number of volunteers to work on the primary and in the general election. The campaign said it was a way of creating jobs and spreading the wealth in a very poor city.

Elicker showed it was possible to participate in the Democracy Fund, the city’s public campaign financing mechanism, and be competitive with more than $170,000 raised for the prmary and over $300,000 by the general election when he continued to cap individual donations at $370 and not take political action commission funds.

Harp, near the end of the campaign, said the race was “humbling” when she encountered opposition from some of the more disenfranchised voters attracted to Carolina and others who questioned if she really wanted the job. The state senator got into the race late after the party’ leadership’s first choice of Probate Jack Keyes, decided not to run.

Harp is best known and respected for her successful efforts on health care issues at the Capitol, justice policy concerning youths and support for programs that help those who depend upon the safety net to survive and she was always someone liberal constituents could count

Also in the crowd to support Harp were DeLauro, Looney, former New Haven Schools Superintendent Reginald Mayo, and city aldermanic leader Jorge Perez.

“Toni started out with the lead and won,” said Nemerson. “The challenge is to bring the city together.”

Nemerson, who may become the city’s development director, said he expects Harp to bring economic development to more neighborhood, beyond downtown.

“She wants a sense of place in the neighborhoods,” he said. “Her instincts are that economic development needs to have a direct impact on property values.”

Another supporter, Housing Authority of New Haven Executive Director Karen DuBois-Walton, said the campaign’s many debates sharpened Harp and made her a better candidate.

“There’s a reason we have this process,” DuBois-Walton said. “It crystallized our positions. I told her after the last debate it was the best performance of hers I’ve seen.”

Longtime Pond Street residents Hazel and Allen Williams attended the festivities out of a sense of history.

“We’ve been through a lot of mayors and a lot of police chiefs,” Hazel Williams said. “But this is the first female mayor.”

She did have some advice for the new mayor. “Put the neighbor back in hood.”

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to correct the reported number of the percentage of New Haven voters who turned out Nov. 5 Have questions, feedback or ideas about our news coverage? Connect directly with the editors of the New Haven Register at AskTheRegister.com.